I didn't come to this work with answers.
I came with the right questions.

I didn't come to this work with answers. I came with the right questions.

Long before I became a nurse, I understood mental health from the inside. As a young child watching my mother battle depression and my father carry the weight of military PTSD, and as someone who faced depression and undiagnosed ADHD myself, I always knew mental health had my heart. Not because I had all the answers, but because I had a perspective most providers never get. I knew this world from the inside out. The good, the bad, the ugly. And I have been driven to change the system ever since.

I spent most of my life feeling lost, or so I thought. I knew I wanted to help people. Children, families, the ones falling through the cracks. I became a registered nurse in 2016 and moved immediately into integrated care, because I saw firsthand the stigma mental health carries and what happens when physical and psychiatric needs go unaddressed together. I started teaching in 2018, became a board-certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner in 2021, and earned my Doctor of Nursing Practice in 2024. All while fighting battles no one around me knew about, let alone could comprehend. I was building a career and finding myself at the same time.

Along the way I found my footing. I learned not to settle in contracts, in patient care, in the rooms where decisions get made. I fought for patient-centered care without stigma. And somewhere in that process, something unexpected happened. Students started following me. Colleagues started asking for guidance. Supervisors asked me to mentor them. Not because I had all the answers, but because I was brave enough to ask questions, to admit what I didn't know, and to center my patients and myself without apology.

The biggest inspiration was you.

Yes, you. The person who just completed a program and has no idea what comes next. The one who fears saying the wrong thing to a patient in crisis. The one sitting across from someone whose pain feels too big, too close, too unfamiliar. The clinician doubting whether they belong in the room at all.

Or you. The therapist who has ever felt less than because you don't know the medications. The one who wants to advocate for your patient but doesn't know how to start that conversation with the prescriber.

Or you. The medical student, the resident, the primary care provider watching your panel fill with patients who need psychiatric care right now. Patients who trust you. Patients who won't go anywhere else. Stuck between knowing they need help and not yet feeling confident enough to give it.

Practical Provider Group was built for all of you. Built from everything I had to figure out the hard way, so you don't have to figure it out alone.

The work behind the work.

How I got here.

• Before 2016
  Personal experience with the mental health system — as a patient, not a provider. Worked in mental health settings before nursing licensure. This is where the foundation was built.
• 2016
  Became a registered nurse. Began immediately in integrated care alongside primary care physicians — managing patients whose psychiatric and physical needs couldn't be separated.
• 2018
  Began teaching. Took on a clinical faculty role and started precepting NP students and medical residents in psychiatric rotations. Discovered where the real gaps in training live.
• 2021
  Board certified as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP-BC) through the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).
• 2024
  Earned Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP). The academic credential that formalized two decades of clinical and educational experience.
• Now
  Founder of Practical Provider Group. Clinical faculty. Preceptor to medical residents. Building the education system I wish had existed when I was starting out.

The values that shape everything here.

Providers who ask for help are always the ones who grow into excellence. The willingness to say "I don't know" or "I need support" is not a weakness in this field — it is the foundation of safe, ethical, and sustainable clinical practice.

The gap between what clinical training provides and what independent practice demands is real, consistent, and closeable. It is not a character flaw or a failure of intelligence. It is a structural problem in how we prepare providers — and it has a structural solution.

Practical Provider Group is built on the belief that providers who are supported, informed, and professionally grounded deliver better care. Not just for their patients — for themselves, their colleagues, and the field they have chosen to give their working lives to.